Friday, January 1, 2010

Nashville's first Parthenon was built for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. After the Exposition was finished, the grounds became Centennial Park and the Parthenon remained. That building lasted for a couple of decades. It was so popular that it was decided that a more permanent second Parthenon would be built, and that it should resemble the original as closely as possible.

From these days in the early 1920s, the idea to have a matching as-close-to-the-original-as-possible Athena replica was also begun. From there, it took decades to secure enough private funding. Once enough donations had been gathered, the next step was to determine what the original looked like, since it wasn't around any more. Once that was Settled, sculptor Alan LeQuire was given the task of making the 42-foot replica with a human-sized Nike, a process that by itself took years. Finally a layer of gold was added to all the appropriate places to finalize the statue circa 1990.